Sunday, August 4, 2013

How do you end poverty? By creating wealth

And we know how to create wealth. How? Unleasing the ultimate resource -- human rationality and ingenuity -- by protecting property rights and thus capitalizing on the huge incentives that accrue thereby. The massive network of spontaneous, voluntary human transactions that results we call the "free-market". And markets are the only known mechanism of creating wealth. Thus, policies and initiatives the promote free-markets are pro-human and pro-wealth; policies that tend to impede or restrict free-markets are anti-life and anti-wealth, regardless of how compassionate or well-intended they may appear to be.

Over at Capitalism Magazine, ethics and strategy professor Jaana Woiceshyn addresses this very topic within the context of her home country of Canada. Here's an excerpt from her worthwhile article:

Making wealth creation and poverty reduction possible requires a
specific commitment from governments: they must grant individuals and
markets freedom. In Canada, like in most welfare states today, this
requires concrete action: the dismantling of the elaborate system of
business regulations, subsidies, and cronyism. This is a significant
task and has not been pursued by the current conservative government,
despite of original election promises. However, it is possible (many of
the Nordic countries and New Zealand are positive examples of the right
direction), and necessary—if ending poverty is the goal. (Under a
capitalist system of freedom, governments would retain one crucial role:
the protection of individual rights against the initiation of physical
force and fraud. This is necessary for peaceful, just functioning of
free markets.)